Why Europeans should not support Israel

This is a light analysis of fjordmans latest essay entitled Why Europeans should support Israel, available on the Brussels Journal. While fjordman has written some stunning essays in the past, I can't help but note that his understandable disliking of Islam and the Islamification of Europe has led him to draw some erroneous and untenable conclusions. They are the conclusions not of someone looking dispassionately at the facts, but of someone who is so desperate to create an anti-Islamic block that he throws all commonsense and history out of the window. He advocates an alliance of convenience (in reality its only really convenient for Israel), but tries to sell it like a moral, historical, cultural, and religious obligation. Without beating about the bush here are some excerpts and my commentary:

One of the most frustrating things to watch is the powerful anti-Israeli and sometimes outright anti-Semitic current that is prevalent in too much of Europe’s media. Bat Ye’or’s predictions about Arab anti-Semitism spreading in Europe as the continent’s Islamization and descent into Eurabia continues have so far proved depressingly accurate.

Where is the evidence that Muslims are influencing Europeans? If they are rebelling against Muslims, why would they be adopting Muslim viewpoints? There is no causal link whatsoever. Muslims may be guilty of much, but of inspiring European anti-Semitism, I don’t think so. However if we don't accept fjordmans conveniently simple assumption it means that we might need to examine more complex and uncomfortable possibilities, namely that the resentment against Jews is not based simply on blind hatred.

This trend needs to be fought, vigorously, by all serious European anti-Jihadists. Not only because it is immoral and unfair to Israelis, which it is, but also because those who assist it are depriving Europeans of the opportunity to fully grasp the threat and understand the nature of the Jihad that is now targeting much of Europe as well.

He doesn’t justify his statement that not supporting Israel is ‘immoral and unfair to Israelis’, which is a major assumption. Furthermore the intensity and ferocity of the conflict in the occupied territories does indeed show us to what lengths Muslims will go when they have a fight on their hands. The legitimacy of that fight is quite another issue. Comparing the potential takeover of Europe to the reclamation of a small strip of land in the Middle East which Israelis siezed off Palestinians more than half a century ago is useless.

Hagen said that if Israel loses in the Middle East, Europe will succumb to Islam next. He felt that Christians should support Israel and oppose Islamic inroads into Europe.

What a preposterous argument this is. Israel is not in Europe, is not a European nation, and has no geopolitical or material significance to Europe whatsoever. Europe existed for centuries before Israel existed and can do so again perfectly well without its existence. The plight of the Israelis is of no relevance to Europeans. Blind support for Israel merely invites Islamic attacks on Europe. The lukewarm language of opposing ‘Islamic inroads into Europe’ is absolutely useless in any case. The way that an Islamic takeover of Europe can be prevented is by deporting Muslims from Europe, not by supporting an apartheid state and inflaming Muslims the world over, while spouting useless rhetoric about Islamic takeover.

Most European media commentators are hostile to the Jewish state of Israel, partly because they get angry with anybody defending themselves against Islamic Jihad instead of surrendering, and partly because they want to project their own feelings of guilt from the Holocaust onto Israel by recasting the Jews as villains and the Palestinians as victims.

Only a minority of European nations were complicit in ‘the Holocaust’, so how can the rest have guilt about a holocaust they never committed? Yet anti-Semitism is rising all over Europe, particularly in Eastern Europe. Why does the only possible scenario that Judaeo-philes can come with always involve guilt about anti-Semitic actions, and cast the Jews as victims. I put it to fjordman that manufactured guilt for ‘the Holocaust’ was and is a tool used to grant Jews and Israel special benefits.

Spanish journalist Sebastian Villar Rodriguez claims that Europe died in Auschwitz: “We assassinated 6 million Jews in order to end up bringing in 20 million Muslims!”

This Spaniard that fjordman quotes also stated the following:
We burnt in Auschwitz the culture, intelligence and power to create. We burnt the people of the world, the one who is proclaimed the chosen people of God. Because it is the people who gave to humanity the symbolic figures who were capable of changing history (Christ, Marx, Einstein, Freud...) and who is the origin of progress and wellbeing.

This is nothing short of brain-dead, subservient and illogical glorification of the Jewish race, which if any one else attempted with any other race, would lead to accusations of racism. As if Europe was so dependant on ‘the people of God’ that without their culture, intelligence and creativity we are nothing but clueless morons. Secondly, leaving aside Einstein, how can a man revere Christ, Marx, and Freud simultaneously? This man clearly cannot be Christian if he utters Marx and Freuds name in the same breath, yet he pretends that he’s grateful that the Jews gave us Christ? Thirdly even if he was Christian, by what logic should we grateful to modern day Jews for Christ. Modern day Jews are infact largely descendants of the Khazars. And if one claims that they are ‘spiritual’ descendants of the original Jews, then they are the self-proclaimed spiritual descendants of the Pharisees who Jesus condemned, and who killed him for it.

French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut thinks that Auschwitz has become part of the foundation of the European Union, a culture based on guilt. “I can understand the feeling of remorse that is leading Europe to this, but this remorse goes too far.” It is too great a gift to present Hitler to reject every single aspect of European culture. This is said by the Jewish son of an Auschwitz prisoner.

He’s right Auschwitz is part of the foundation of the EU, and ‘the Holocaust’ is the official religion.

As Hugh Fitzgerald notes, “Fortunately for so many, and for the Arabs, the victory of Israel in the Six-Day War promptly provided a reason to depict Jews as villains, not victims. This found an eager audience of Europeans, who were already eager for psychological reasons to find fault with Jews so as to avoid thinking unduly about the behavior of many European peoples and states during the war.

More of the same. These people are so close-minded that they always limit peoples possible motives to either irrational hatred, or in this case, as a method of avoiding coming to terms with how much we persecuted the Jews. Are there really no other possible explanations apart from the eternal victim hypothesis?

The damage done to the morale of Europe because of the destruction of European Jewry has been great.

Mainly because the guilt has been stuffed down our throats by a media that negates the possibility of corporate guilt when it comes to Jewish political, media and economic control, but finds it perfectly acceptable to assign guilt for a holocaust on an entire continent, or to call the Serbs ‘guilty as a nation’ for a war which was instigated by the West.

If Western Europe, or the West generally, were after all that has happened to permit Israel to go under, Europe would not recover.”

This guy needs help. He’s been so brainwashed that he thinks that the destiny of Europe is inextricably linked to that of Israel.

Europeans need to understand how closely intertwined are the fates of Israel and of Europe itself. The term “Judeo-Christian” is not a cliche.

The term Judeo-Christian did not even appear in its current context until the mid 1930’s which really tells you all you need to know. For almost 2000 years the two faiths existed separately, and suddenly in 1930 the modern term appeared, for obvious political reasons. It appeals to a nonexistent historical unity and calls for a banal, modernist theology. It is in fact the theology of a non-believer. Any Christian that believes Christianity is incomplete without adding the term ‘Judeo’ before it, clearly does not believe in the truth of Christianity in the first place. The reverse is also true. Show me a Jew who believes that Christianity has contributed to Judaism. "Judeo-Christianity" should be seen for what it is - another secular twentieth century fraud, manufactured for narrow political ends. If the values of the 2 are so interchangeable why are they two different religions?
Even Jews agree: Joshua Jehouda, a prominent French Jewish leader, observed in the late 1950s:
"The current expression 'Judaeo-Christian' is an error which has altered the course of universal history by the confusion it has sown in men's minds, if by it one is meant to understand the Jewish origin of Christianity . . . If the term 'Judaeo-Christian' does point to a common origin, there is no doubt that it is a most dangerous idea. It is based on a 'contradictio in abjecto' which has set the path of history on the wrong track. It links in one breath two ideas which are completely irreconcileable, it seeks to demonstrate that there is no difference between day and night or hot and cold or black and white, and thus introduces a fatal element of confusion to a basis on which some, nevertheless, are endeavouring to construct a civilisation." (l'Antisemitisme Miroir du Monde pp. 135-6).
The Judean historian Josephus wrote: "What I would now explain is this, that the Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances by succession from their fathers, which are not written in the laws of Moses . . ." While the Pharisees recognized the laws of Moses, they also claimed that there was a great body of oral tradition which was of at least equal authority with the written Law - and many claimed that the Tradition was of greater authority. By their tradition, they undertook to explain and elaborate upon the Law. This was the "Tradition of the Elders", to which the name of Talmud was later given. It had its beginning in Babylon, during the Babylon captivity of the people of Judah, where it developed in the form of the commentaries of various rabbis, undertaking to explain and apply the Law. This was the foundation of Rabbinic Judaism. This Judaism was very different from the religion of the ancient Israelites. The late Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, who was the Chief Rabbi of the United States, expressed this conclusively when he said: "The return from Babylon, and the adoption of the Babylonian Talmud, marks the end of Hebrewism, and the beginning of Judaism." The Jewish Encyclopaedia tells us that the Talmud is actually "the product of the Palestinian and Babylonian schools" and is generally referred to as "the Babylonian Talmud". Dr. Boaz Cohen in Everyman's Talmud states the Talmud is the work of "numerous Jewish scholars over a period of some 700 years, roughly speaking, between 200 [B.C.] and 500 [A.D.]."Rabbi Louis Finkelstein in Volume 1 of The Pharisees, the Sociological Background of their Faith says, "Pharisaism became Talmudism, Talmudism became Medieval Rabbinism, and Medieval Rabbinism became Modern Rabbinism. But throughout these changes of name, inevitable adaption of custom, and adjustment of Law, the spirit of the ancient Pharisee survives unaltered." According to The Universal Jewish Encyclopaedia, Vol. VIII, (1942) p.474 : "The Jewish religion as it is today traces its descent, without a break, through all the centuries, from the Pharisees. Their leading ideas and methods found expression in a literature of enormous extent, of which a very great deal is still in existence. The Talmud is the largest and most important single member of that literature."Moshe Menuhim explains that the Babylonian Talmud embodied all the laws and legends, all the history and 'science,' all the theology and folklore, of all the past ages in Jewish life -- a monumental work of consolidation. In the Talmud, Jewish scholarship and idealism found their exclusive outlet and preoccupation all through the ages, all the way up to the era of Enlightenment. It became the principal guide to life and object of study, and it gave Judaism unity, cohesion and resilience throughout the dark ages. The Talmud, more than any other literature, so defined Judaism that Rabbi Ben Zion Bokser admitted, "Judaism is not the religion of the Bible." (Judaism and the Christian Predicament, 1966, p.159) It is the Talmud that guides the life and spirit of the Jewish people." The Talmud is to this day the circulating heart's blood of the Jewish religion. Whatever laws, customs, or ceremonies we [Jews] observe -- whether we are Orthodox, Conservative, Reform or merely spasmodic sentimentalists -- we follow the Talmud. It is our common law." (A History of the Jews, Solomon Grayzel).Both Jewish and Christian scholars agree that it was Jesus Christ's flagrant rejection of this "Tradition of the Elders" and his open confrontation with the powerful Pharisees that created the climate that led to his death. Historically, Christian thinkers argued that the Talmud was directly responsible for the rejection of Christ. In their view these "traditions" blinded the eyes of the people to a true understanding of the prophecies which related to the coming of the Messiah.

Anyway to wrap up fjordmans essay:

We cannot defend Western civilization without defending its Jewish component, without which modern Western culture would have been unthinkable.

As if modern Western culture is perfectly healthy.

The religious identity of the West has two legs: The Christian and the Jewish ones.

This is quite simply the most bizarre and desperate reasoning I have come across in a long time. The only point he is correct on is that Jews have shaped modern western culture, but they have done this by dismantling the positive (ie truly Christian) elements of this culture. In other words, they have contributed, but their contribution has been one of dismantling and perverting. The way fjordman puts it, one would think that there was a blissful symbiotic relationship between the two.

It needs both to stand upright. Sacrificing one to save the other is like fighting a battle by chopping off one of your legs, throwing it at the feet of your enemies and shouting: “You won’t get the other one! We will never surrender!” We could always hope that our enemies will laugh themselves to death faster than we bleed to death, the Monty Python way of fighting. Maybe that works, but most likely it will leave us crippled and pathetic, if not dead.

The analogy verges on the ridiculous. Europe and Israel are hardly comparable. If we were to take the analogy even further: then the leg of Europe would be 6ft long and the leg of Israel would be a small and rotting stump that should be severed before it infects the only healthy leg left. Israel needs European and American support but Europe does not need Israel at all.

Likewise, we can only begin to heal our self-inflicted civilizational wounds if we embrace the Jewish component of our cultural identity.

This is perhaps a fittingly ridiculous end to what is without doubt the worst essay I have seen fjordman come up with. It is though a growing trend that a lot of people who have recently familiarised themselves with the Islamic problem feel an urge to form an unholy alliance and to desperately pretend that there is no other problem but the Islamic one. As if a secular and multi-cultural Europe would be absolutely fine as long as all the immigrants were not Muslims. The whole moral order was in deep decay already. A lot of bloggers have felt compelled to embed one of the ‘I stand with Israel banners’ which alludes to a Biblical verse from Genesis 12:3. It is based on a flawed interpretation of scripture. Only Christian Zionists believe the bizarre view that the modern state of Israel is promised to Jews just because they are the supposed ethnic descendants of the Israelites, and that it is a Christian duty to uphold it. But either a whole lot of anti-Islamic bloggers are converting to this strange sect of evangelical Christianity or they are dishonestly using a convenient misinterpretation of Scriptures and trying to pass it off as a generally accepted mainstream teaching for their own ends. Christian Zionism may well be a topic that I will dismantle in the future if I have the time. Until then I leave you with the words of St. Nikolaj:

“the wonder is that the Europeans, baptized and anointed, should have surrendered so totally to the Jews that they think with Jewish minds, accept Jewish programmes, adopt Jewish anti-Christianity, receive Jewish lies as truth, welcome Jewish catch-words as their own, walk along the Jewish path and serve Jewish aims. This is the thing to wonder at in our time, and nothing else in the world. Everything else is less important or unimportant. But the most important thing is how Christian Europe managed to become the serving maid of the Jews... Think on these things, brother Serbs..."